Himali Weerahandi, MD, MPH

Assistant Professor

I am an assistant professor and clinician-investigator in the Division of Hospital Medicine at UCSF Health. My areas of expertise include transitions across the continuum of care, care coordination, readmissions, and discharge practices. I conduct translational research targeting systems drivers of adverse outcomes (such as hospital readmission and mortality) with the goal of improving health care quality. In particular, I am the principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health/National Heart Lung and Blood Institute K23 Career Development Award examining the transition from skilled nursing facility to home after a heart failure hospitalization.

As a doctor caring for older hospitalized patients, I’ve witnessed a growing need for patients to be discharged to skilled nursing facilities before transitioning home. My research investigates the quality of discharge practices at skilled nursing facilities, along with patient and caregivers’ perspectives on these processes. These lines of inquiry will identify gaps in care that can be improved upon using systems-level interventions. I also examine how patient-level factors, such as frailty and cognitive impairment, should be accounted for when individualizing best practices. The goal of this work is to make transitions safer and improve longitudinal outcomes for older adults.

I also have additional streams of research investigating how to increase use of evidence-based best practices to improve healthcare delivery quality, evaluation of hospital performance on equity and the effect COVID-19 has had on healthcare delivery (particularly during the height of the pandemic) and post-hospitalization outcomes.